i was supposed to be induced last thursday (7/20). i started having contractions at about 3:30am and went into the hospital at 7:00am to be induced. i was worried that because i seemed to be going into labor on my own they would send me home and tell me to wait until the contractions got closer together. fortunately, they just admitted me and got me ready to be induced. it turned out that my doctor really wanted to deliver ethan, but he had patients to see in the office all morning. long story short, i didn't get induced, they broke my water around 2:00pm, and ethan was born at 7:24pm.
let me talk about labor. if you're a female and suffer from menstrual cramps, labor is like that. except when labor really starts to kick in, it's like having your worse menstrual cramps ever multiplied by 10 and occurring every few minutes for a minute at a time. if you're a male, there is simply no way for you to know what it would be like to have menstrual cramps, so just be satisfied knowing that women are built with a much higher pain threshold than you.* i was strapped to a monitor that measured the intensity of my contractions from 0 to 100. i asked for an epidural almost immediately after a felt them getting really bad. the intensity of those contractions was 50. by the time i was fully dilated, the contractions were measuring off the charts at 120 and were right on top of each other. i don't say this to scare anyone from having children. i say this to confirm how GREAT and effective epidurals can be. so many women are afraid of the pain of childbirth. um, can you say "no pain" with the epidural? i think i would have been blinded by the pain of those last contractions. i have no idea how women do this without drugs. anyway, after a relatively easy labor (thanks to a fabulous epidural) and 10 minutes of pushing, our second baby boy was born healthy with a full head of hair. 7lb. 8oz. 20" long. ethan looks a lot like isaiah as a newborn:
it's much easier taking care of a newborn the second time around. after having to run around after isaiah all the time, taking care of a baby that just sleeps and eats and soils his diaper from time to time is a piece of cake. the feeding schedule kind of kills us on sleep, but it's not so bad since i can nap during the day (isaiah-willing!). eric and i are definitely more relaxed since we're not jumping up every time ethan makes a little noise to make sure he's okay. anyway, thanks for all the thoughts and prayers! they definitely worked, seeing how everything went and continues to go smoothly.
*when we took childbirth classes a couple years ago, the instructor suggested a means to simulate the pain of contractions to help us practice our breathing during labor: take an ice cube and squeeze it in your hand for a minute to a minute and a half. personally, i don't think it comes near the pain of what a serious contraction feels like, but it does hurt. eric - the dear sweet loving husband that he is - grabbed some ice chips at the hospital while i was in labor so he could empathize with my labor pains. 10 seconds later: "all i can think about is the pain!"
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